A federal judge Monday halted the first federal execution in 17 years just hours before it was scheduled to take place.
Citing the potential pain inflicted by the lethal injection cocktail, U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan stopped the scheduled execution of Daniel Lewis Lee, a former white supremacist who murdered an Alabama gun dealer, his wife and their 8-year-old daughter in 1996.
The Justice Department immediately filed a notice with the court saying it intends to appeal Judge Chutkan’s ruling.
Government lawyers called Judge Chutkan’s ruling “inappropriate,” saying it “conflicts with binding Supreme Court precedent.”
In her ruling, Judge Chutkan scolded the Trump administration, accusing the president’s team of rushing the execution process and preventing inmates from fully litigating their appeals.
Inmates and others on their behalf have filed multiple legal challenges to the executions, ranging from fears of traveling to a prison amid the coronavirus pandemic to claims the drugs used in lethal injection violate the Constitution’s ban on “cruel and unusual” punishments.
“The succession of last-minute rulings is the result of the Government’s decision to set short execution dates even as many claims, including those addressed here, were pending,” Judge Chutkan wrote. “The Government is entitled to choose dates, but the court cannot take shortcuts in its obligations in order to accommodate those dates.”
Judge Chutkan said the inmates could prevail in their legal challenge to the drug the Justice Department will use to carry out the executions. The inmates have alleged it produces sensations of drowning and asphyxiation, causing “extreme pain, terror and panic.”
“The scientific evidence before the court overwhelmingly indicates that the 2019 Protocol is very likely to cause Plaintiffs extreme pain and needless suffering during their executions,” she wrote.
The Supreme Court last month gave the federal government a green light to again carry out death sentences that have been on hold since 2003. The justices gave the go-ahead when they declined to hear a case accusing the Trump administration of cutting corners in approving new protocols to restart executions, including how to mix a lethal injection and how to administer it.
Hours after Judge Chutkan’s ruling, relatives of one of the death row inmate’s murder victims petitioned the Supreme Court to delay Lee’s death because of the coronavirus crisis.
The family of Lee’s victims filed a petition to delay the execution saying they wanted to witness the execution but feared traveling during the coronavirus pandemic.
The move is intended to give the court more options to stay the execution if the legal challenge to the method of execution fails.
“The government has argued that, despite its repeated statements that death sentences are carried out in large part in the name of the victim and their families, these family members have no interest in asserting their right to attend the execution and seeking to postpone the execution until the resurgence of the COVID-19 virus abates and they can travel safely,” the plaintiffs wrote in the petition.
It is the latest move in the legal tug-of-war over Lee’s execution.
A federal judge had granted their petition last week, but late Sunday a federal appeals court overturned the ruling.
In reversing the low’s decision, the federal judge said the plaintiffs’ claim lacked “any arguable legal basis and is therefore frivolous.”
• Jeff Mordock can be reached at jmordock@washingtontimes.com.
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